A Postcard a Day - Tuesday 29 November 2022- T for no postcard

 Hello lovely ladies,

No postcard today. I am chronically sleep deprived and can't keep my eyes open.

So I am only fleetingly joining the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard. 

Here is my qualifier:

I made a devilled cottage pie the other day.

Which I had with a glass of wine.

The other half went in the freezer for another day.

Here is the recipe:

My hubby continues to be very ill, and he is also confused which is making things that much more difficult. Daughter Tracey is flying in tonight. That is a bit of relief for me. She has come to help, she says.

That is it from me. I hope I feel better next week,

Happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 25 November 2022 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies, how are you all? It's been a tough week for me and I struggle to find smiles this week, but every cloud has a silver lining and it helps to 'dig them out'.

But lets start with my customary postcard.

It comes to me from Jaime in Washington DC in the USA. He had been on a trip to Tennessee, camping in the mountains.

The card features LeConte Lodge, accessible only by hiking trails (ranging from5.1 to 8.2 miles in length). It is the highest guest lodge in Eastern U.S. at 6.360 feet.

This is probably the view the card was made from:

I would love to do that sort of thing. I walk and hike a lot in spite of my age. (In my walking group I'm always the oldest).

According to the website, there are individual cabins and there is a communal dining room, as a meal is included.

They use llamas as pack animals:

You know when you are taught how to relax and they tell you to imagine a beautiful place where you'd like to be, like a sunny beach. I try to imagine mountains. And this would be my dream image:

I couldn't think of anything more beautiful,

and quiet....

Oh well, a girl can dream!

This was the stamp:

Now let me think, What has made me smile this week? I'm enjoying my knitting. I'm knitting socks. The first one is nearly finished:

We have a calico cat who lives outside, but mostly lives in the shed on the roof of the cave house. She is very shy and miauws to be fed. I feed her twice a day and she hides somewhere while I fill her bowl. Sometimes I get a glimpse of her:

I love cooking but cooking for one is no fun, so I make a menu and make myself cook a meal every day. Yesterday was toad-in-the-hole (in the Remoska) with broccoli:

The plaster on the wall near the chimney pipe had cracked a bit and pieces of plaster were falling down. Our dear friend David said: Oh no problem, I will come and fix this . Today he came, and it didn't take him long. Thank God for good friends.

He came on his scooter and is still wearing his helmet! I had to laugh!

And here is my sister. She is clearing out the house of a relative of her husband's and found this bowler hat! 

And that also made me smile. It suits her don't you think?

That is it from me today. I'm going to attend to my husband. 

I'm posting some funnies at the end. Apologies if you have seen them before, I haven't time to check.

Have a lovely weekend what ever you are doing and don't forget:

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 22 November 2022 - T for Tarts

 Hello lovely ladies,

Here I am on a very windy/stormy Monday evening. The wind is howling and whistling  through cracks I didn't know we had. I hate that noise, but hubby loves that sound. We have lit the stove (almond shell burner) and it is toasty warm indoors. I'm glad I don't have to go out in this weather. It's typical 'hot chocolate' weather. 

Let me show you a postcard. This one came last week all the way from Singapore:

The card is round shaped, but it is not very visible on the scan. It was sent by Tze and she writes that these are cantonese egg tarts, her favorite tea time snack. Best enjoyed with a cup of hot black tea.

Wiki says: The egg tart is a kind of custard tart found in Chinese cuisine derived from the English custard tart and Portuguese pastel de nata. The dish consists of an outer pastry crust filled with egg custard. Egg tarts are often served at dim sum restaurants, bakeries and cha chaan tengs (Hong Kong-style cafes).

It inspired me to make one of my egg custard tarts. 

I make one big one rather than several little ones. Here is the recipe:

The stamps are gorgeous:

On June 16th 1963, the former Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, launched an ambitious tree planting campaign to transform Singapore into a green city. Over the decades, many parks and gardens have been created, and greenery invades streets and buildings. Today, Singapore is the greenest city in Asia, and also, probably, in the world.

To commemorate 50 years since the beginning of this transformation, Singapore Post released, in July 2013, the stamp series 'Our city in a Garden', portraying 'Singapore’s vibrant urban landscape nestled within a thriving garden with native plants and wildlife' (right image). As a point of interest, the local rate stamp value of the set is made from a special biodegradable paper including seeds, and can be planted ...

I haven't been able to find anything about the You Are My Sunshine stamp.

Hubby continues to deteriorate. Nights are bad and I am exhausted but this is what I promised when we got married and I would not  have it any other way. 

Today is T for Tuesday hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard, so I need a picture with a drink. We had a visitor yesterday, and he brought a bottle of olive oil (from his own trees) and a Bakewell slice, which he had bought that morning at the English market in Baza, our nearest town.

I had a cup of coffee this morning with my Bakewell slice. It is so delicious, that I'm going to try and make it myself this weekend. (Watch this space).

That is it from me this week,

Happy T-Day all!

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 18 November 2022 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies,

How are you all? Have you had things to smile about? Why don't you join us with your smiles at Annies (A Stitch In Time)

Here we have had some rain (No photo, but you all know what rain looks like). In this dry country a bit of rain is a celebration. We haven't had proper rain for more than two years. Yesterday we had more than 10 min of good rain.  That made me smile.

A postcard in my postbox always makes me smile. He is one of the latest cards:

It features the front of a Puffin Book. Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world.

The name "Puffin" was a natural companion to the existing "Penguin" and "Pelican" books. Many continued to be reprinted right into the 1970s. A fiction list soon followed, when Puffin secured the paperback rights to Barbara Euphan Todd's 1936 story Worzel Gummidge and brought it out as the first Puffin story book in 1941.

The stamps on this pòstcard are spectacular. It was sent to me from Poland:

The stamp on the right celebrates  the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Bamberian settlers to Poznan. I have not been able to find out much about these Bamberian settlers.

The second from the right is the Great Tit, a beautiful bird.

The third stamp from the right features the naturalist Michal Jankowski. Michał Jankowski  (September 24, 1842 – October 10, 1912) was a Polish szlachta nobleman who settled in the Russian Far East after serving a sentence in Siberia for participating in the January Uprising of 1863. After being released in 1868 he settled in the Russian Far-East in Sidemi, Primorsky Krai, in a region now known as the Yankovsky Peninsula where he established a horse-breeding farm, reared deer for their antlers, established ginseng plantations, and became a well-known hunter and naturalist. He collected specimens of fauna and flora for museums and collectors and many species were named after him including Jankowski's bunting.

The left stamp is about Louis Pasteur. Louis Pasteur 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization, the latter of which was named after him. His research in chemistry led to remarkable breakthroughs in the understanding of the causes and preventions of diseases, which laid down the foundations of hygiene, public health and much of modern medicine. His works are credited to saving millions of lives through the developments of vaccines for rabies and anthrax. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern bacteriology and has been honored as the "father of bacteriology"and the "father of microbiology"(together with Robert Koch;the latter epithet also attributed to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek).

Here in Caniles everything is continuing as it was. Hubby is still very ill and we have good days and bad days. Nights are generally bad and I have a lack of sleep. I feel I can sleep for a week given the chance. I'm just very tired.

My friend from Holland visited on her way back to Holland from Portugal, where she has been staying for a couple of months. They have a campervan so I didn't have to make beds etc. The stayed two nights and it was nice to catch up.

One evening they invited me to eat out and we shared a lovely seafood pizza.

This Tuesday our friends came to see us and hubby found it all a bit much having so many people in the house, so we went out to lunch. The waitress took the photo:

What else can I tell you.... I have started to knit another pair of socks with the wool I had bought in Holland the last time I was there:

It's beautiful machine washable wool.

I like to use circular needles and I usually start at the toe. I find that easier. Then I can make the cuff as long as I like according to how much wool I have left.

That's it from me today. I have some funnies for you at the end. But this one is for Angela:

It is artwork made out of wire. Aren't they beautiful. I'm sure they are schnauzers. Angela will no doubt correct me if I am wrong. I've tried to find out who sculptured them but I found them on Facebook and trawling even one day back on Facebook doesn't guarantee you'll find what you are looking for. 

Have a lovely weekend all,

Keep smiling!

Hugs, 

Lisca